Jaipur Literature Festival off to a rousing start

Well Begun
The extravaganza called the Jaipur Literature Festival got off to a rousing start on Thursday at its usual venue, the Diggi Palace grounds. Maheshweta Devi, the 88-year-old doyenne of Bengali letters, delivered the keynote address.

Rajasthan Governor Margaret Alva, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Tourism Minister Bina Kak were also in attendance. In her speech, Alva declared that this was the first time she felt a sense of "trepidation" while speaking, because she was addressing a "formidable audience, comprising some of the world's greatest writers".



Crowd Puller
A much bigger crowd gathered in the afternoon to hear His Holiness, the Dalai Lama's speech. The limited space on the front lawn of the sprawling heritage hotel - that's what the Diggi Palace is now - was packed with around 4,000 people, making it difficult to find even standing room. Busloads of Tibetans turned up to catch a glimpse of their spiritual leader, lining up on both sides of the path from the hotel entrance to the front lawn.

Dalai Dilemma
The event featuring the Dalai Lama was billed as a conversation between him and author Pico Iyer. However, the author barely got a couple of questions in before the Dalai Lama turned the conversation into a monologue. Incidentally, "The Open Road", one of Iyer's 10 books, is on the exiled Tibetan leader.



The Dalai Lama's hour-long speech, which contained little that he had not said several times before, was finally brought to an end when an audience member interrupted him loudly saying: 'One question…'

When it was brought to His Holiness's attention that his programme was near its end, he happily said he was in no hurry to leave and could resume his speech if asked to. However, the organisers diffidently pointed out that it was time for the next session, featuring another set of writers.



Reluctant Buddhist
The Dalai Lama made one disarming revelation: as a child he was by no means attracted to the Buddhist philosophy. But he had to study it as part of his curriculum in Tibet, and at a certain stage take part in debates on the finer points of the subject. "I then started studying it seriously because if I didn't, I would have been defeated in the debates," he said.

Welcoming the Neighbours
The first of the Pakistani authors' sessions - writers Jamil Ahmed and M.A. Farooqi talking to Ameena Sayid, who heads Oxford University Press in Pakistan - went off without a hitch. The youth wing of the state Bharatiya Janata Party, which had given a call to oppose the presence of Pakistani writers over the recent border clash between India and Pakistan, failed to show up. Jeet Thayil, the writer targeted by Muslim fundamentalists for reading a passage from Salman Rushdie's banned novel, The Satanic Verses, at last year's festival, is slated to speak only on the fourth and fifth days of the festival.


Funding Crunch
The festival may be a rousing hit with writers and book lovers - 285 speakers are slated to speak and over 200,000 have registered to attend across the five days of the festival. But funds are still a problem. Both Namita Gokhale, Director of the festival (along with William Dalrymple) and Sanjoy Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Productions, which organises the festival, admitted that raising funds for this year's event had been particularly tough because of the bleak economic situation. Of the estimated Rs 5.8 crore the festival will cost, the organisers had been able to raise only a little over Rs 4 crore from sponsors.